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A pile of guts and severed mouse heads are on the walkway in front of the door. I’d say ew, but at this point, I’m used to it. I’ve cleaned up four carcasses today already.
And even though I don’t lose my cool over the new pile of guts, I come close to losing it over the thought I may have accidentally adopted a dozen semi-feral cats. Panic rises in my chest, and I curl my fingers into fists to keep from pulling out my phone to google cat exterminators.
The moment passes and my hostage-situation training kicks in, checking my emotions. Besides, I doubt cat exterminators exist—and if they do, I don’t want to know. I’d never actually want Harvey’s cats to be done away with, but I also don’t want them to live here.
“I’m really sorry about all this, Harvey. What can I do to get the cats back to you?” I ask him as calmly as possible. It’s not his fault I didn’t communicate my expectations clearly.
At the same time, the cats can’t stay. “Bear is here a couple of days a week, and he’s super allergic.”And I don’t want any more gifts.
“Shoulda thoughta that before you fed them.” Harvey raises an eyebrow, as if he’s pointed out something every dummy knows.
But this dummy didn’t.
Then something occurs to me. “How did you catch them all to bring them here? Did they walk into the carriers on their own?”
Harvey scoffs. “Of course I feed them. But only dry food and water. Never…” he points to a paper bowl with a thin layer of white liquid outside of my door. “Milk. Cats are genetically lactose intolerant.”
My chest empties in defeat. “So, basically, I’ve done everything wrong?”
His face pinches into a wrinkled prune until, with great reluctance, he says, “I’ll do what I can to get them all back to myplace, but it’s only a mile away. Between the mice and the wet food, they’ll likely find their way back here.”
“You don’t keep them inside?” I ask. I want his answer to be yes, but I also don’t want to think too hard about how a house with at least a dozen cats in it looks.
He lets out a long sigh and rolls his eyes. “You’ve got the wrong idea about cats if you believe people are the ones telling them what to do.”
I have no response to that. It’s a truth universally acknowledged that a cat in want of a master must be a dog in disguise.
I could be tougher with Harvey if I had my badge or gun to back me up. Cops have authority, even when they’re the ones who’ve messed up. But I don’t have authority or even any history in Paradise to back me up. I’m the new girl in town. Harvey has a settled confidence about him that makes me sure he’s as much a part of Paradise as the Thomsens are.
Which means I have two choices: provide food for a dozen cats and be thankful I will never have any kind of rodent or Bear in my bookstore or do my best to round them up and take them back to Harvey.
The first is obviously the easiest solution, but I’d spend a fortune on cat food. And maybe, if I’m completely honest, I’m curious to see what Georgia meant about Bear being my best customer. Especially now that I know he wanted to ask me out.
I let out a long sigh. “Let me help you get the carriers from your car. I promise to bring your cats back to you.” Because I will catch them.
Cats can’t be harder to capture than criminals, even if they are smarter than a lot of the people I’ve put behind bars.
Harvey lets out a low sound that’s like a cat who is done being touched, then opens the back of his old station wagon and starts pulling out crates. I rush to help him, because I not only needto get the cats back to him, I also need to figure out how to apologize for what I did to Bear.
I spend half of the next day catching and returning cats in shifts. Catch a couple, take them to Harvey, come home, catch a few more. And I know I shouldn’t use the wet cat food to trick them into getting in the crates, but it works.
Mostly.
I’mprobablytaking different cats back to Harvey, but honestly, five cats into my re-re-homing project, they all start to look the same. I can count, though. By dinnertime, I’ve taken twelve cats and crates back to Harvey. And I’m eighty-seven percent sure they were all different cats.
Okay, maybe sixty-eight percent sure.
Fine.
I’m not at all sure that I haven’t taken the same four cats back to Harvey three times. But I haven’t had any “gifts” yet today, so that’s a good sign.
By late afternoon, one carrier remains, and I can’t find a cat to put in it anywhere. I’m not one to leave a job unfinished, but when I hear gravel crunching outside, I open the door to see several cars parking in the alley, including Bear in a Jeep.
Something dashes past me into the studio. I quickly shut the door because here’s my last cat. I’m not letting it escape before I get it back to Harvey.
But I also want to avoid Bear until I can sincerely apologize to him in private. I think a public apology would embarrass him. Whatever he’s doing, he’s obviously with friends, so now isn’t the right time.
I face the gray cat with long, matted fur, sitting on its haunches staring up at me with googly eyes. Literally, googly eyes that could have come straight from a kindergartner’s craft kit and glued to the cat’s face. They point in opposite directions, and even before the cat lets out a loud, mournful, bark-like meow,I’m drawn to this oddball who’s as much a cat misfit as I am a city girl in Paradise.
